Posts Tagged 'Abuse Tickets'

When you find hosted content that doesn't meet our acceptable use policy or another kind of inappropriate Internet activity originating from a SoftLayer service, your natural reaction might be to assume, "SoftLayer must know about it, and the fact that it's going on suggests that they're allowing that behavior." I know this because every now and then, I come across a "@SoftLayer is phishing my email. #spamming #fail" Tweet or a "How about u stop hacking my computer???" Facebook post. It's easy to see where these users are coming from, so my goal for this post is to provide the background you need to understand how behavior we don't condone — what we consider "abuse" of our services — might occur on our platform and what we do when we learn about it.

The most common types of abuse reported from the SoftLayer network are spam, copyright/trademark infringement, phishing and abusive traffic (DDoS attacks). All four are handled by the same abuse team, but they're all handled a bit differently, so it's important to break them down to understand the most efficient way to report them to our team. When you're on the receiving end of abuse, all you want is to make it stop. In the hurry to report the abusive behavior, it's easy to leave out some of the key information we need to address your concern, so let's take a look at each type of abuse and the best ways to report it to the SoftLayer team:

If You Get Spam

Spam is the most common type of abuse that gets reported to SoftLayer. Spam email is unsolicited, indiscriminate bulk messaging that is sent to you without your explicit consent. If you open your email client right now, your junk mail folder probably has a few examples of spam ... Someone is trying to sell you discount drugs or arrange a multi-million dollar inheritance transfer. In many ways, it's great that email is so easy to use and pervasive to our daily lives, but that ease of use also makes it an easy medium for spammers to abuse. Whether the spammer is a direct SoftLayer customer or a customer of one of our customers or somewhere further down the line of customers of customers, spam messages sent from a SoftLayer server will point back to us, and our abuse team is the group that will help stop it.

When you receive spam sent through SoftLayer, you should forward it directly to our abuse team (abuse@softlayer.com). Our team needs a full copy of the email with its headers intact. If you're not sure what that means, check out these instructions on how to retrieve your email headers. The email headers help tell the story about where exactly the messages are coming from and which customer we need to contact to stop the abuse.

If You See Phishing

Phishing abuse might be encountered via spam or you might encounter it on a website. Phishing is best described as someone masquerading as someone else to get your sensitive information, and it's one of the most serious issues our abuse team faces. Every second that a phishing/scam site is online, another user might be fooled into giving up his or her credit card or login information, and we don't want that to happen. Often, the fact that a site is not legitimate is clear relatively quickly, but as defenses against phishing have gotten better, so have the phishing sites. Take a minute to go through this phishing IQ test to get an idea of how difficult phishing can be to trace.

When it comes to reporting phishing, you should send the site's URL to the abuse team (also using abuse@softlayer.com). If you came across the phishing site via a spam email, be sure to include the email headers with your message. To help us filter the phishing complaint, please make sure to include the word "phishing" in your email's subject line. Our team will immediately investigate and follow up with the infringing customer internally.

If You Find Copyright or Trademark Infringement

If infringement of your copyright or trademark is happening on our platform, we want to know about it so we can have it taken down immediately. Copyright complaints and trademark complaints are handled slightly differently, so let's look at each type to better understand how they work.

Complaints of copyright infringement are processed by our abuse team based on the strict DMCA complaint laws. When I say "strict" in that sentence, I'm not saying it lightly ... Because DMCA complaints are legal issues, every requirement in the DMCA must be met in order for our team to act on the complaint. That might seem arbitrary, but we're not given much leeway when it comes to the DMCA process, and we have to be sticklers.

On our DMCA legal page, we outline the process of reporting a DMCA complaint of copyright infringement (primarily citing the statute 17 U.S.C. Section 512(c)(3)). If you don't completely understand what needs to be included in the claim, we recommend that you seek independent legal advice. It sounds harsh, but failure to submit copyright infringement notification as described above will result in no legal notice or action on behalf of SoftLayer. When you've made sure all required evidence has been included in your DMCA complaint, make sure "copyright" or "DMCA" are included in your subject line and submit the complaint to copyright@softlayer.com.

Trademark complaints do not have the same requirements as copyright complaints, but the more information you can provide in your complaint, the easier it will be for our customer to locate and remove the offending material. If you encounter unauthorized use of your registered trademark on our network, please email copyright@softlayer.com with details — the exact location of the infringing content, your trademark registration information, etc. — along with an explanation that this trademark usage is unauthorized and should be removed. In your email, please add the word "trademark" to the subject line to help us filter and prioritize your complaint.

If You See Abusive Traffic

Spam, phishing and copyright infringement are relatively straightforward when it comes to finding and reporting abuse, but sometimes the abuse isn't as visible and tangible (though the effect usually is). If a SoftLayer server is sending abusive traffic to your site, we want to know about it as quickly as possible. Whether that behavior is part of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack or is just scanning ports to possibly attack later, it's important that you give us details so we can prevent any further activity.

To report this type of abuse, send a snippet from your log file including at least 10 lines of logs that show attempts to break into or overload your server. Here's a quick reference to where you can find the relevant logs to send:

Email Spam - Send Mail Logs:

/var/log/maillog

/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

Brute Force Attacks - Send SSH Logs:

/var/log/messages

/var/log/secure

Like spam and phishing reports, abusive traffic complaints should be sent to abuse@softlayer.com with a quick explanation of what is happening and any other details you can provide. When you submit a complaint about abusive traffic, make sure your message's subject line reflects the type of issue ("DDoS attack," "brute force attempts," etc.) so our team can investigate your report even quicker.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, these are just four types of abusive behavior that our abuse department addresses on a daily basis. Our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) outlines what can and cannot be hosted using SoftLayer services, and the process of reporting other types of abuse is generally the same as what you see in the four examples I mentioned above ... Send a clear, concise report to abuse@softlayer.com with key words about the type of violation in the message's subject line. When our team is able to look into your complaint and find the evidence they need to take action, they do so quickly.

I can't wrap up this blog of tips without mentioning the "Tips from the Abuse Department" blog Jennifer Groves wrote about reporting abuse ... It touches on some of the same ideas as this post, and it also provides a little more perspective from behind the lines of the abuse department. As the social media gal, I don't handle abuse on a day-to-day basis, but I do help people dealing with abuse issues, and I know a simple guide like this will be of value.

If an abuse-related issue persists and you don't feel like anything has been fixed, double-check that you've included all the necessary information and evidence in your correspondence to the abuse team. In most cases, you will not receive a response from the abuse team, but that doesn't mean they aren't taking action. The abuse@ and copyright@ email aliases function as notification systems for our abuse teams, and they correspond with the infringing customers internally when a complaint is submitted. Given the fact that hundreds of users may report the same abusive behavior at the same time, responding directly to each message would slow down the process of actually resolving the issue (which is the priority).

If everything was included in your initial correspondence with the abuse team but you still don't notice a change in the abusive behavior, you can always follow up with our social media team at twitter@softlayer.com, and we'll do everything we can to help.